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The GameFan history thread

I've got a new wiki-powered section of my website, and I'm working on the page for GameFan magazine. One of the pieces of the history of GameFan I'm really sketchy on, though, is the part where Ziff Davis game in. I've heard a few things - that Ziff tried to purchase the rights to the name GameFan but failed, they purchased the rights but never used the name, and that they even ran gamefan.com for a short time before putting it down.

Could anybody clear things up concerning the connection to GameFan that Ziff had?

I think what happened was that ZD wanted to launch a Gamepro style magazine, one for the kiddies, that they wanted to name GameFan. For some reason they couldn't obtain the name (perhaps that website that fucked you guys over still had it) and went ahead with the name "GameNow".

Oh, that magazine crashed pretty quickly soon after

"Chuy, you're going to have a magical life. Because no matter where you go, it's always going to be better than Tucson."

Sam was hired to relaunch GameFan.com, where he managed to quadruple traffic in a matter of weeks. He then accepted a News Editor Position at GameSpot; where he played a key role in raising the site's traffic to record levels and helping formulate a massive relaunch strategy.

Now, I'm not so familiar with the end-of-days GFO crew, but I've never heard of Sam. As well, saying that he was in charge of the "relaunch" of GameFan.com makes me wonder.

Now, I'm not so familiar with the end-of-days GFO crew, but I've never heard of Sam. As well, saying that he was in charge of the "relaunch" of GameFan.com makes me wonder.

When Sam left Gaming Age, his first "paying" gig was for GFO, but he was there for just a couple of months before he left for GameSpot. His "name" at GF was Captain Smak (it was during the ECM era that he was writing for GFO, not after the magazine shut down).

As far as the supposed 'relaunch', GFO hit a dead cycle for a period of time and when Sam came on board, started updating way more frequent and thus worked miracles according to his bio.

Matt, I heard rumors back in the day that some GF editors caught shit because were selling review copies of games to pirates. Any truth to that as far as you know?

From my said GameFan information page on my new site:

GameFan found itself in a tight spot when a pirated copy of the pre-release version of Resident Evil 2 was found by Capcom at a local SoCal video game shop... a copy that contained information showing it to have been copied from the preview release given to GameFan.

A member of the staff stupidly let the copy of the game get into the hands a friend who was know for pirating games. What would result would be pretty obvious to most people.

Originally Posted by Integrity

When Sam left Gaming Age, his first "paying" gig was for GFO, but he was there for just a couple of months before he left for GameSpot. His "name" at GF was Captain Smak (it was during the ECM era that he was writing for GFO, not after the magazine shut down).

As far as the supposed 'relaunch', GFO hit a dead cycle for a period of time and when Sam came on board, started updating way more frequent and thus worked miracles according to his bio.

Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to GameFan.com after I stopped running it, so I wasn't always up on who was part of it. I remember Hi-Fi, but that's pretty much it.